]]>http://beautifullyimperfects.net/2014/05/19/print-all-over-me/feed/0Rohn Meijerhttp://beautifullyimperfects.net/2014/05/09/rohn-meijer/
http://beautifullyimperfects.net/2014/05/09/rohn-meijer/#commentsFri, 09 May 2014 06:25:25 +0000http://beautifullyimperfects.net/?p=1997Continue reading →]]>Dutch photographer Rohn Meijer takes old negatives from past shoots and places them in a caustic chemical bath for months at a time. What he pulls out are negatives forever transformed, if not totally destroyed.

“Sometimes I find that nothing is left because they’ve disintegrated, and sometimes I’m pleasantly surprised,” he says.

The idea for the project came after Meijer discovered a batch of slides in his basement that had been exposed to moisture for 15 years. Most people might have tossed them, but Meijer saw that the moisture had created a pleasing crystallized effect, so he decided to experiment. He began developing a cocktail of water and other chemicals — a formula he prefers to keep secret — that would interact with the silver nitrate on the back of the negative and enhance the crystallization. To keep the negatives as saturated as possible, he built a homemade, hermetically sealed container for them to stew in.
The element of surprise is a distinct part of the process, but Meijer says he sometimes purposely applies his cocktails like paint to specific parts of the negatives to help draw out or accentuate different visual effects.

]]>http://beautifullyimperfects.net/2014/05/09/rohn-meijer/feed/0Rashid Rana’s Multifaceted Imageryhttp://beautifullyimperfects.net/2014/03/11/rashid-ranas-multifaceted-imagery/
http://beautifullyimperfects.net/2014/03/11/rashid-ranas-multifaceted-imagery/#commentsTue, 11 Mar 2014 10:02:50 +0000http://beautifullyimperfects.net/?p=1988Continue reading →]]>“Working with multifaceted, multiplied imagery, Rashid Rana splits the visible universe apart in order to remake it anew. In sculpture, video and photographic prints, Rana transforms snapshots of shop signs in Lahore into abstracted cityscapes or renders reproductions of Old Master paintings as digital fields of colour. Utilising the grid structure, the artist has recently begun to rearrange famous paintings such as The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus (1618) byPeter Paul Rubens and the Oath of the Horatii (1786) by Jacques Louis-David, scrambling these famous compositions into pixelated and codified puzzles.

Rana’s splicing and stitching technique can be carnal and violent, as in this ongoing series of brutally lacerated and reassembled Baroque and Neo-classical paintings, collectively known as the Transliteration Series. For his first solo exhibition in Italy, Rana has also reflected the legacy of the surrounding city in his source material, choosing paintings by artists hailing from Milan, such as Andrea Solari and Cesare da Sesto. While the originals are held in the Louvre in Paris and the National Gallery in London, Rana symbolically returns the images to the source of their creators, albeit visually distorted and temporally displaced in the process. Rana complicates and realigns such divided notions as figuration and abstraction, manipulation and reality, but also succeeds in knocking the world off its axis and transcending both traditional and technological means of communication.”

]]>http://beautifullyimperfects.net/2014/03/11/rashid-ranas-multifaceted-imagery/feed/0Adam Lister’s 8-bit Paintingshttp://beautifullyimperfects.net/2014/02/21/8-bit-paintings/
http://beautifullyimperfects.net/2014/02/21/8-bit-paintings/#commentsFri, 21 Feb 2014 17:42:52 +0000http://beautifullyimperfects.net/?p=1980Continue reading →]]>“The simplistic beauty of the “8-bit” work that emerged from the first days of digital are what inspire the artwork and paintings of Adam Lister. They capture the essence of the digital age, representing familiar images of culture and art in a format that is nostalgic and beautiful in its limitations. Lister’s collection of 8-bit-inspired portraits, reproductions and original works have been met with critical acclaim and tremendous excitement from collectors.”

Beth Whaanga’s series of photos called Under the Red Dress show the changes to her body caused by cancer. Photograph: Nadia Masot.

“How radical and provocative is an honest image of a woman’s body?
Beth Whaanga, a mother of four from Brisbane, Australia, is finding out after posting images on Facebook of her body following surgery for breast cancer late last year. Taken by Nadia Masot, the pictures are brilliantly direct, documenting Whaanga’s ongoing hair loss, total bilateral mastectomy, navel reconstruction and hysterectomy scar. Whaanga lost more than 100 friends on Facebook after posting the pictures – and then they went viral. A registered nurse, she describes herself as a “breast cancer preventer”, and hopes to make people more aware of the physical changes that might signal a problem.”

]]>http://beautifullyimperfects.net/2014/02/13/under-the-red-dress-project/feed/0Pixxxel by Jean Yves Lemoignehttp://beautifullyimperfects.net/2013/12/18/pixxxel-by-jean-yves-lemoigne/
http://beautifullyimperfects.net/2013/12/18/pixxxel-by-jean-yves-lemoigne/#commentsWed, 18 Dec 2013 08:17:59 +0000http://beautifullyimperfects.net/?p=1951Naked “pixelized girls” made by the photographer Jean-Yves Lemoigne for the 3rd issue of the French magazine Amusement.

]]>http://beautifullyimperfects.net/2013/12/18/pixxxel-by-jean-yves-lemoigne/feed/0Digital Mimesishttp://beautifullyimperfects.net/2013/12/18/digital-mimesis/
http://beautifullyimperfects.net/2013/12/18/digital-mimesis/#commentsWed, 18 Dec 2013 08:08:31 +0000http://beautifullyimperfects.net/?p=1947Continue reading →]]>“Pixelhead is a simple balaclava made with an elastic fabric very similar to swimsuit material. Its aesthetic appearance, however, is quite specific: the decorative pattern chosen by Martin Backes is indeed “pixelated” and the colour palette is similar to those that a face or a head shot would have if photographed by a digital camera. Pixelhead has been created as a garment for urban survival: worn in the daily hustle and bustle it makes faces unidentifiable if pictured or recorded by surveillance cameras. Intuitively we could describe this object as “camouflage.” This definition, however, has in itself a surprising reversal of perspective. The ancient concept of mimesis is in fact that of imitation of nature and the world. But Pixelhead operates its mimesis towards an environment that is not natural anymore. Being “mimetic” in this project means, instead, to emphasize a profound and urgent transformation: to defend our privacy in (physical) reality we must adapt as much as possible to the technologies of control, implemented in the thousand eyes of the machines looking at us. Those eyes are a constant and continuous filter through which everything is read, encrypted and processed. ”

“The work deFacebook by Indian artist Nandan Ghiya consists of a series of portraits made from images taken from popular social networks and physically printed on canvas. The selected photos are classic half-length or full-figured portraits, (partially) set up according to the classical canons of the family portrait. The wooden or golden frames are thick and heavy. Together with the hue of the pictures, which often changes to sepia, they give the images a nostalgic antique mood. This aesthetic vintage effect is functional, engendering a sense of disruptive irony. Some parts of the pictures (often the faces) have been modified using very apparent and colourful glitch effects. This is underlined by a subtle but crucial characteristic: the frames of the paintings retain their classical rigor in the colours and materials but they follow every whim of the glitched pixels which overflow the profiles, breaking the hardness and regularity of the classical frames. With this refined aesthetic expedient, the artist looks to disrupt the style of the classic portrait. The transition to digital of the public representation of the self (once the family portrait) became engrained after Facebook. The subjectivity, so fixed on canvas, is represented in all its fragility, creating effective effigies of the modern portrait – even more impressive because of the errors in the unstructured faces.”